Pubdate: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 Source: StarPhoenix, The (CN SN) Copyright: 2007 The StarPhoenix Contact: http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/letters.html Website: http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/400 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?142 (Supervised Injection Sites) DANGER LURKS IN CONSERVATIVE DRUG STRATEGY The tale of woe at the Air India inquiry from the RCMP and CSIS about their desperate need for money and personnel to combat terrorism stands in stark relief to the federal government's ill-considered plan to adopt a get-tougher stance on drugs. RCMP Supt. Rick Reynolds and Jim Galt, head of the civilian spy agency's financial analysis unit, told inquiry commissioner John Major that, six years after Canada passed legislation to crack down on terrorist financing, their agencies are hamstrung by the lack of resources. "I don't want you to be critical of your political masters, but I can be," noted Major, the former Supreme Court justice, in speaking to Reynolds, who'd testified that he was left scrambling for staff to do the job in a post-9/11 security environment. "It seems to be inadequate -- if you asked for 126 and six years later you have somewhere around 50, it just seems to me that it speaks for itself." Galt said his unit is making do with a staff of six, when it needs twice or thrice that amount to yield better results than the mere two charges that have been laid since the terrorist financing law came into effect. Even as Major was wondering how these undermanned agencies could be expected to get any prosecutions of terrorists, the RCMP was taking to the public airwaves in an $800,000 ad blitz aimed at the 18- to 34-year-old demographic, seeking to replace an aging cohort of veterans that's expected to retire within the next few years. The national police force has suffered many black eyes in recent years related to poor management, investigative screw-ups, high-handed conduct and even officer fatalities that have led to questions about operational tactics. With young Canadians also facing a plethora of job options that offer better pay, hours and locations, the RCMP is hard-pressed to meet its goal of recruiting 2,000 people a year. It's against this backdrop that Health Minister Tony Clement is set to let loose the Conservative government's $64 million anti-drug strategy, which appears to be rooted more in ideological yearnings than on sound evidence. One needn't look much further than the United States to understand just how well the war-on-drugs approach and the heavy hammer of punitive justice has worked to curb the drug trade and addictions. Yet, Clement, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson and Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day are girding themselves to launch a northern version of that folly, despite the fact that Canada's security resources are hard-pressed to protect citizens from real threats instead of being made to tackle what's essentially a health problem that has been criminalized. Their strategy, to be announced soon, promises tougher sentences for drug offenders, more money to stop drugs at the border and advertising to dissuade young people from using drugs. As well, led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the government also wants to shut down a highly lauded and successful experimental safe-injection site in Vancouver where addicts are provided clean needles and are supervised by nurses so that the incidence of heroin overdoses are reduced, and some addicts even are being diverted to rehab programs. In fact, Thomas Kerr, a researcher at the University of British Columbia medical school, has done a study that has proven wrong the allegations of critics and shown that crime around the Insight injection site hasn't increased and that drug use hasn't gone up. As everyone from Dr. Keith Martin, the Liberal MP from British Columbia whose background is in treating substance abuse, to 130 doctors and scientists who signed a petition suggests, Clement and the government are creating a "potentially deadly misrepresentation" in applying the term "harm reduction" to describe the federal strategy. To medical experts, harm-reduction is action that mitigates the spread of deadly HIV-AIDS, hepatitis and overdoses, not stiffer measures that are geared to prevention, treatment and enforcement. In any case, while police agencies indeed should be going after organized criminals who thrive on the human misery spread by the drug trade, the Harper government only will be putting a further strain on already stretched law enforcement agencies by pushing its "party's over" tactic that requires cracking down on and criminalizing every pot smoker they can find. The real threats that face Canada run far wider and deeper and require more attention from security officials, while the health challenges posed by addictions require more attention from Clement than to fob them off as a justice issue and to play politics with human lives. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake